Cheap Puppet on a Chain (Book) (ALISTAIR MACLEAN) Price

Related Products

Customer Reviews of Puppet on a Chain

knock out!!!!!!!
Easily my favorite book ever! One of the best stories of its genre. Alistair Maclean does a wonderful job of describing Amsterdam. From the moment Paul Sherman arrives at Schiphol, you can feel the tension in the air and thereafter the book is impossible to put down. The canals, the shady characters that abound the story, the helpless victims (Astrid Lemay, her brother George), the ultimate sadists, and their weapons of torture, will make you believe that you are there. If you have read all of Maclean's works but this one, this one is very different in that it brings out the dark side of Maclean's work. Read it and discover it for yourself. You will not regret it!! It's a pity that today's moviemakers do not take a look at this gem and make a movie out of it (there was one done in 1976 and that was not as good as desired). Sean Connery, Pierce Brosnan, or George Clooney would do a good job of Paul Sherman, I think!

---

Vintage Maclean
This book is certainly the best of Alistair Maclean. It has all the crucial elements of a detective-thriller. The added bonus is the occasional sarcastic remarks by Paul Sherman which makes one laugh all over. From the very first it grips the reader and keeps churning out unexpected twists in the plot,the main element being Maclean's trademark:- Suspense. It keeps the reader rivetted upto the last page and the action never dies even when the suspense has been revealed. The only drawback in the book is the almost total invincibility of the main character,Paul Sherman. He seems to anticipate and get out of every dicey situation. Barring this,this book is recommended for all Maclean's fans.

---

WHEN IS A PUPPET NOT A PUPPET?
Question: When is a puppet not a puppet?

Answer: When it's a corpse, of course!

Yes, In MacLean's _PUPPET ON A STRING_ this was one method that a psychopathic killer used to make his point -- his point being don't try to catch me or "this" could happen to you. "This" being your body hanging from a hook through your neck from a third story flagpole projected out over the street. Gruesome, huh?

The plot revolved around the efforts of Col. Sherman, an Interpol agent, to find and eliminate a major drug supplier in Amsterdam. Our psychopathic killer was a prominent player in, but not the "mastermind" of the drug distributors.

At times during this book, I wondered how Col. Sherman had survived as long as he had. On at least three occasions he was careless enough to get captured, severely beaten, and almost killed. Only a combination of a lot of luck and last second help from unexpected places kept him alive. He also made enough serious mistakes and overlooked the obvious with such frequency that his friends and aides often found themselves in serious trouble or, worse, turned up dead.

Those are the weak points. On the other hand, Sherman was remarkably resilient, and came out of each failure a little closer to finding out who was running the show and what ingenious methods were being used to smuggle the world's largest supply of heroin into those countries where it brought the highest prices.

The action was non-stop, and, at least to this reader, the ending did come as a surprise. I could easily picture it as a spy thriller movie starring whoever is the "star of the moment."

If you can suspend disbelief for a bit and just read _PUPPET ON A STRING_ as a fast paced thriller, I think you'll enjoy it in spite of a few "aw come on, he must be smarter than that" reactions. I know that I did.